Prior to the present invention, as set forth in general terms above and more specifically below, it is known, to employ various types of athletic speed and time measurement devices including stop watches. For example, a stopwatch or timing gates may be used to determine how fast a baseball player can run. The disadvantages of these systems are that they only evaluate how fast a player can run and do not take into account actions such as batting and touching a base. Consequently, a fast runner may have slow base running times if the proper technique is not used when transitioning from batting to running and proper base running techniques are not utilized. Some examples of base running considerations include running through and not stopping at first base, proper base rounding by touching the portion of the base that provides the runner with the fastest times around multiple bases, and time differences between bases when comparing sliding versus running or different sliding techniques such as foot first versus hand first.
It is further known, to employ various types of athletic speed and time measurement devices. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,363,243 by Morley, U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,101 by Berseth, U.S. Pat. No. 4,627,620 by Yang, U.S. Pat. No. 4,998,727 by Person, U.S. Pat. No. 6,661,342 by Hall et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,477,046 by Alonso, U.S. Pat. No. 8,821,305 by Cusey et al., U.S. Pat. No. 9,623,316 by Chapa, Jr. et al., U.S. Patent Application 2013/0014585 by Hetherington, U.S. Patent Application 2014/0302950 by Burt, and Chinese Patent 205608825. While these various athletic speed and time measurement devices may have been generally satisfactory, there is nevertheless a need for a new and improved athletic speed timer that precisely captures the exact instance when the batter/runner left the starting position and when he/she touched the target base and keeps track of data (such as the player's speed or the time it took to run between bases) for each player to show improvement or to show the effects of transitioning from batting to running or the time difference to reach a particular base for various slide techniques.
It is a purpose of this invention to fulfill these and other needs in the athletic speed and time measurement device art in a manner more apparent to the skilled artisan once given the following disclosure.